


Wish

by HyperparallelLovers



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 13:10:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21209099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HyperparallelLovers/pseuds/HyperparallelLovers
Summary: Worm AU based on Puella Magi Madoka Magica.  This version of Earth Bet runs on magic and miracles, invisible to most.  Here there are no superheroes or supervillains, only magical girls and witches - and Taylor Hebert has just joined their ranks in Brockton Bay.





	Wish

WISH

  
  
EPISODE ONE: "...but you're not one of them."  
  
  
"You know, you don't have to go to this meeting if you don't want to."  
  
I didn't stop walking, but I did look down at the furry creature walking on the ground beside me. He looked like a cross between an albino cat, rabbit, and squirrel, give or take some magic golden rings on its rabbit-ears.  
  
Kyubey.  
  
"Oh?" I asked. I hadn't been expecting the input. It was still nice to hear some sympathy - but I wasn't backing out of this now.  
  
"It would be completely fair, after everything she's put you through." Kyubey didn't move his mouth to speak. Psychic communication. _That_ was something that could really come in handy in daily life. I kind of figured that Kyubey only ever opened his mouth to eat - whatever it even was that something like him would eat. It would be nice if I had the full psychic communication power that Kyubey had, but the more limited version Kyubey could lend me was good enough.  
  
"I agree completely," I said. "But at the same time, if I didn't show up, I don't think that that would be fair to _her_, after what I accidentally did." _You know - violated her free will and all._ "And besides, I have to admit - I am at least a little bit curious."  
  
I noted some bees buzzing around my head, in a way that I might have mistaken for a threat a few days ago. This was going to take a lot of getting used to.  
  
"Well, suit yourself," thought Kyubey. "You're getting close. Would you like to let her know you're almost there?"  
  
I nodded sharply.  
  
_Sophia?_ I thought.  
  
"Taylor!" Yet another train of thought in my head, but with a very distinct and familiar voice. Sophia's. "Wait up a bit - I'll be out to see you as soon as I can - mom won't shut up about something."  
  
Did she slip in that detail to remind me that my mom died? Probably not, but it raised my blood pressure a bit anyway. I was still frazzled from last week, when this had all really started in earnest.  
  
_Okay,_ I thought, and I let that hang there for a moment. _I'll be waiting for you._  
  
"K," Sophia thought at me. It was an unpleasant thought.  
  
"Oh!" I said aloud, realizing something. "Kyubey, if I change into my costume right now, no one will think it's strange, right?"  
  
"That's right," thought Kyubey. "People who can't use magic also usually can't see magic. They'll think there's something a little strange about you, but they won't be able to put together exactly what. You won't attract much attention, if that's what you're worried about."  
  
"Alright, thanks," I said, and I gave the strange creature a thumbs up. I pulled my soul gem out of my shirt, where it had just kind of been dangling on its golden chain. I held it in my hand, looked at it and spun it - a little egg-shaped jewel in a golden frame, with a heraldic emblem of a scarab beetle tastefully worked into the base. I might as well do it - Sophia would probably already be transformed when I showed up, expecting me not to be, and there was no point in letting her make that power play. "Transform."  
  
I rose several inches into the air and began to gently rotate clockwise, as though I were a marionette. I was suddenly intensely aware of the countless bugs that lived in a hundred-yard radius around me. That awareness had already been there, but it was expanding, bubbling over from my subconscious mind into my conscious, accompanied by a swelling heavenly choir. It was an array of points in three-dimensional space, something like a starfield of bugs surrounding me - given that the ground made it more of a flattened disc than a sphere, and given that they were orbiting in celebration of my transformation, it was sort of like a galaxy where I was the central black hole.  
  
It was _almost _an intense enough experience for me to overlook the fact that my clothes were melting away, changed by magic into a sort of magical girl uniform. My jeans were just _gone_. My tennis shoes turned into ridiculous heels with a segmented, insect-inspired design. It was very lucky for me that running in heels like these was part of the standard-issue magical girl skillset, because if it hadn't been, I would have been completely screwed. My sweatshirt, and the t-shirt underneath it, blended together into a short and frilly black dress, which frankly stayed in place more thanks to literal magic than to the thin black straps. It had a pattern of reddish-brown splotches concentrated around my sides, which was ugly on multiple levels.  
  
As my soul gem pulled itself back to my neck to rest, a handle slid out of it, which I gripped onto. It had soon extended to its full length and separated from the gem. I held it out, dramatically posing for no-one in particular. My special weapon, my black baton. Although I was _pretty_ sure my bugs were more dangerous, it still felt extremely comforting to be armed with something I could physically hold in my hands. Meanwhile, my glasses slid up my head and transformed into a firmly-affixed antennae headband. Luckily, my eyes simultaneously transformed into functioning ones. I sighed as I gently landed back on the ground and stopped spinning.  
  
All-in-all, I looked like I was wearing a "sexy worker ant" Halloween costume.  
  
_ Thanks, Kyubey. I hate it._  
  
Kyubey just watched silently as I continued on my way to Sophia's. I concentrated on my field of bugs. There were things I could do with them, by willing my magic out to them. Some applications were obvious, and others were subtler; I imagined I would discover more in time. I could send out orders to them, make them swarm at targets or move in precise formations. I could send out questions, and get replies back based on what they could sense. Where lots of similar bugs traveled together, and _blurred_ together, I could seamlessly raise their numbers, invisibly multiplying swarms from the inside. And where bugs were injured, or had recently died, I could revive and restore them.  
  
All sleight-of-hand, something most people would explain away as mundane. Maybe those bugs just _happened_ to form that swarm. Maybe I just had a _hunch_ they'd be coming. Maybe that swarm was just a bit _bigger_ than they'd thought at first. Maybe they just didn't hit those bugs _quite_ as hard as they'd thought they had. That was just how magic worked - immense power, immense deniability.  
  
None of it was free. If I'd actually cared to _use_ any of my spells, it would have contributed to the darkness in my soul gem. Just inhabiting my magical girl form at all was expanding that darkness a bit, very gradually. And although Kyubey had been evasive about the subject, I had a distinct and unmistakeable feeling of dread about the possibility of my soul gem going completely dark. It was already very cloudy from the experimentation I'd done in the days since I'd made my contract with Kyubey. I could apparently purify it again by killing witches, which Sophia apparently had some pointers on. As much as I loathed her, fighting witches sounded dangerous, and I didn't want to try it while anything less than fully-prepared.  
  
"You're very intimidating, Taylor," thought Kyubey. "Personally, I've never even seen a magical girl as powerful as you are, and you're just starting out."  
  
"Yeah, okay, don't get ahead of yourself," I said. I wasn't sure exactly how much of me was glad to have him around, because he was a cute animal sidekick that flattered me, and how much of me was uncomfortable with his presence, because he was a shifty otherworldly entity that flattered me.  
  
A few adults gave me odd looks as I waited outside the Hess household. I wondered how they'd remember me - some oddly-dressed goth girl? A lost cosplayer? A weird daydream? Little kids took much more notice of me, staring and pointing, or running away in terror. That bothered me. One small boy came up to me with desperate eyes and asked if I could make the termites stop eating his family's house. I shrugged and I willed them to go and stay gone. _Okay._  
  
"Jesus, Taylor," thought Sophia.  
  
_What?_ I started to think back, but she was already heading for the door. When she appeared outside, I saw that she wasn't actually dressed up at all - she was just in regular workout clothes, as her ordinary self. She approached me so she could speak to me without yelling, but she didn't go as far as whispering; she just spoke relatively softly.  
  
"You know you're being flanked by a huge cloud of flies, right?"  
  
I did not.  
  
"Reflex," I said, and shrugged.  
  
"That's got to be a fucking giant drain on your soul gem," she said. "You can't afford to run out of light. No-one can."  
  
"I had a hunch about that," I said. "But I also had a hunch that we'd be hunting down and killing a witch later, so I expect that it'll be replenished."  
  
"That's true," she said. "But we have a _lot_ to talk about first."  
  
"That we do," I admitted, cold.  
  
"Don't change back into plainclothes," she said. "It's like flipping a light-switch on and off. The transformation sequence sucks up a shitload of power. Come sit down." She started towards a round green plastic table on her patio, and I followed her there.  
  
As I was sitting down, Kyubey climbed up onto the table.  
  
"I see you brought Kyubey with you," said Sophia.  
  
"I'm here as Taylor's moral support," thought Kyubey. I actually wasn't sure whether I liked that or not.  
  
"About that," said Sophia, and something caught in my throat. "We have more important things to discuss, but... I said I was sorry. About everything. But we didn't really get a chance to talk about it."  
  
"Okay," I said.  
  
"I'm sorry, Taylor," said Sophia. "I'm fucking sorry."  
  
"Okay," I said, and I tried to show a little bit more fear. All of my bugs theatrically backed away from Sophia.  
  
"I'm sorry I took Emma away from you," said Sophia. "I'm sorry we laughed at you after your mom died. I'm sorry for all the fucked-up shit we did to you, and maybe I'm especially sorry for putting you in that dirty fucking locker." _She sure says 'sorry' a lot._  
  
"Why would you be sorry about any of that?" I asked. Dripping with insincerity. I found that my swarm was buzzing to augment my inflections. "If Emma were a worthwhile friend, we'd still _be_ friends. I could thank you for showing me I was wrong about her."  
  
"It's not her fault," said Sophia, with puzzling certainty. "I saved her life. She owed me a debt, and she came to worship me. I abused her admiration for my amusement. It was an evil thing I did."  
  
"She came to worship you... because you were a magical girl?"  
  
"Yes, and she's as civilian as they come. She looks at Kyubey, she sees a scraggly white alley cat and she tries to get away from it."  
  
"I'm not scraggly," thought Kyubey.  
  
"Alright," I said. "Good to know. All things considered, though, I still don't really want to make up with her in the future. So if you were planning on setting something like that up, I'm not-"  
  
"That's fine," said Sophia. There was a hint of a snap there, which made me uneasy. "One last thing before we start talking shop. When you made your contract, and became a magical girl... your wish wasn't targeted at me, right? Like, you didn't wish I'd get crabs, or..."  
  
"Why?" I asked. "Do you have crabs?"  
  
"Fuck you," said Sophia, trying to be playful in a way that didn't really land. "I'm just asking: did you wish for anything I should know about?"  
  
When I'd been trapped inside my bloody, rotting locker, Kyubey had appeared in the faint strips of light in the door, and he'd made his pitch when I wasn't anywhere close to the right headspace for it. He'd offered to grant me a wish, and I hadn't had time to think of anything good. I'd just blubbered, "I wish someone would help me," because I wasn't really taking anything in, just drowning in the fear that no-one even cared much where I was. Kyubey had told me someone was on the way, and a couple of minutes later, I learned that "someone" was Sophia, struck by a sudden pang of guilt.  
  
"No," I lied. After a moment, I added: "And I accept your apology." I was pretty sure I didn't actually accept it, but it was the only way forward.  
  
"Okay," said Sophia, and she smiled a little bit. It was _literally _unnatural. "So - how much do you know about magical girls?"  
  
"You make a wish to make a contract," I said. "Kyubey gives you your soul gem, which you use to perform magic. Magic makes your soul gem cloud up, and I'm pretty sure something awful happens if your soul gem goes completely dark."  
  
"Yes," said Sophia, with clear-yet-cryptic disdain.  
  
"As a magical girl," I continued, "you need to cleanse your soul gem on a regular basis, and you do that by killing 'witches'? Which are apparently malevolent magical entities that cause a significant portion of the world's suffering, so frankly, it sounds like we _should_ be killing them _anyway_ just to be good people." Sophia looked wounded by that last part. On the surface, I liked seeing that, but it also left me feeling threatened by the potential fragility of this entire arrangement.  
  
"You're right about that, Taylor," thought Kyubey. "A magical girl is a very noble thing to be! The cycle of fighting witches is a good thing for the entire world." Alright, maybe I liked Kyubey.  
  
"Each magical girl has their own unique magical specialty," I said. I didn't want the conversation's reins to return to Sophia too soon - I wanted to look knowledgeable. "Your magic is much stronger in your magical girl form, which forces you to wear one of these ridiculous costumes. Magical girls often team up in various ways, but there's fierce competition for opportunities to kill witches, because there presumably aren't enough of them to go around."  
  
"Okay," said Sophia, when I paused for just a little bit too long trying to think of more to say. "You've got the basics down. Kyubey's Magical Girls 101 course. But there are some serious details he leaves out; he prefers to let us figure those things out for ourselves."  
  
"I really try to be straightforward, but humans can be so weird sometimes," thought Kyubey. Sophia gave his head an affectionate scratch, and he leaned into it a bit like a cat might.  
  
"So, point of order one - as your soul gem fills up with shit, you become less emotionally stable. When it fills up completely, you lose your mind and turn into a witch. That's where witches come from - they also slowly split apart and multiply like germs, but if you trace any witch all the way back to the source, it was originally a magical girl like you or me. Before she overexerted herself and became all-magic-no-girl."  
  
I stared at Sophia.  
  
_Fuck._  
  
_Why did you do this to me? Why the _fuck_ did you do this to me?_  
  
"Taylor?" asked Sophia. "Do you understand?" It wasn't Sophia, really, expressing concern for me now. It was some creature _called_ Sophia, which my wish had _made out of_ Sophia. A substitute installed in place of the real thing.  
  
"I... think I do," I said. "From now on, I have to spend a substantial portion of my free time looking for and participating in deadly fights with magically unleashed insane undead remnants of other girls who were once stuck in my predicament. If I slack off on it, I will eventually become one of them."  
  
"Possibly many of them," thought Kyubey.  
  
"Possibly many of them," I agreed. "This is my life now. Got it."  
  
"I know it sucks," said Sophia. "But you get used to it eventually. Or you die, or become a witch."  
  
"Lovely," I said.  
  
"And for what it's worth, you also do a lot of good," said Sophia. "You'd care about that, wouldn't you? Witches use their endless fountains of magic to hurt random people. There are suicide witches who deepen depression, conspiracy witches who weaken people's grasps on reality, abuse witches who make users and rapists. Witches constantly make every problem in the world worse, so by killing them, magical girls make every problem in the world better."  
  
"That's right!" thought Kyubey.  
  
"But magical girls _become_ witches," I said. "It's a vicious circle." I kind of felt like an idiot, describing the problems with this setup to two people - well, a person and a magical creature - who obviously had a lot more experience with it than me.  
  
"Probably," said Sophia. "But you got your wish, didn't you?"  
  
I almost punched her in the face.  
  
_Maybe if you hadn't thrown me in that fucking locker and left me there to rot, I would have actually been able to think through my wish, and I would have asked the right questions, and I would have actually made a useful wish, or better yet, I wouldn't have gotten stuck in this cosmological Ponzi scheme. Except that if I hadn't made a wish, you wouldn't give a fuck about me or my well-being, you useless pile of shit._  
  
"Taylor," said Sophia, with a sudden note of alarm. "Whatever you're doing with your bugs, stop. Your soul gem's getting darker." My bugs _were_ quite angry on my behalf. I calmed them down.  
  
"Huh," I said. "Apparently I can use my magic subconsciously." I was so fucked.  
  
"Your soul gem is your weak point," said Sophia. "Keep track of it. Protect it. Injuries to your body are bad, they can take you out of a fight and put you at the mercy of an enemy, but you can eventually recover from any of that. You are your soul gem. If it takes a hit and breaks, you're dead."  
  
"So my body is just another thing I control," I said, turning it over in my mind.  
  
"Right," said Sophia. "And it doesn't age. You're going to be fifteen forever."  
  
"The benefits just - keep - piling - up!" I said.  
  
"Lots of people would do anything just for eternal youth," thought Kyubey. "Some girls even wish for it because they didn't realize that was already part of the deal." I considered that for a moment.  
  
"Why wouldn't you tell them?" I asked.  
  
"When the wish is made, that's all there is to it," thought Kyubey. "If I made a habit of correcting poorly-thought-out wishes, there wouldn't be enough magical girls to sustain humanity. The Earth would quickly be overrun by witches." I couldn't even argue with it, because it didn't even _start_ to make sense to me.  
  
"Whatever you wished for, don't worry about it," said Sophia. "It's not good for you, and you can't ever know the world would be better off if you hadn't made a wish anyway. There's more we need to go over."  
  
I let her continue.  
  
"Brockton Bay is a magical girl hot spot," said Sophia. "No one knows why, exactly, but it has a population of magical girls that you usually only see in a big city like New York or LA. There's a reasonable chance that we'll run into one of our competitors while we're looking for witches."  
  
"Competitors, like...?"  
  
"Some of them are friendly rivals," said Sophia. "Some of them are hostiles, and should be avoided if you don't think you can take them in a fight."  
  
_ Great._  
  
"Either way, it's a dog-eat-dog world out there," said Sophia. "There are rarely enough witches to go around. And when there aren't, magical girls starve and turn into witches until the ecosystem balances out. You have to fight to survive."  
  
"That sounds like fun," I said, staring directly into Sophia's eyes, which were apparently not where her soul was located.  
  
"Don't say things like that," she said, and she practically growled. Yup, that was the Sophia I knew. "People might think you mean it, and you won't like the attention you get."  
  
"Go on."  
  
Sophia sighed.  
  
"Magical girls usually don't live a month after making their wish-"  
  
I was running out of fucks, but _fuck._  
  
"-but there've been magical girls in Brockton Bay long enough that we have quite a few older ones. They're the ones you really need to watch out for, because they don't just have a _little _bit of experience on you. They're movers and shakers, superpredators. They shape the entire magical structure of the Bay. If you run into any of them, or their wards, run away."  
  
I sighed, and despite my explicit intention to conserve my magic, I felt the sigh ripple through my bugs, too. Everything about being a magical girl just felt like a worse version of being a high school student. Sophia was even there.  
  
"First and worst superpredator is Hana. If you see a little girl in a flowing American flag dress, that's her; she's been here longer than anyone can remember. She's the Brockton Bay liaison of the Sisterhood, an international magical girl cabal that has its fingers in every pie they can find. So she's a superpredator who can call in worse neighboring superpredators - but don't underestimate her alone, either. Word on the street is that she has _never_ left her magical form, not in years and years. It takes something special to maintain that."  
  
I was feeling more than a little stupid sitting here in this ludicrous dress. Damn it, I'd tried to think ahead and look prepared, but I'd just betrayed my inexperience. I was in so over my head.  
  
"Every magical girl has a special weapon, and every magical girl has a magical specialty. Hana's specialty is her weapon. It can become anything. She's always armed, and you'd better believe she can whip out a rocket launcher at a moment's notice and start busting blocks if she has to. The good news is that she won't go out of her way to hurt you - but she _will_ try to recruit you. Don't take her up on it. Fight to get away from her if you have to. She's been through a lot of apprentices, and every one of them eventually either dies or gets shipped off somewhere else to serve the Sisterhood."  
  
I nodded. _Crazy cultist, check._  
  
"Her current apprentice is Missy Biron. Fucks around with space and gravity and geometry. _Very_ effective against witches - or other magical girls. Maybe the most powerful living thing in the Bay. If she manages to survive, she'll become a superpredator some day, but I don't think she will. Too unstable; I've snooped around and pieced together her story. Poor dumb kid wished her parents back together; didn't even think to wish that they'd _like _each other again."  
  
My situation could be _worse_, I had to admit. Kyubey stared at me with empty button eyes - a machine for granting wishes, no questions asked, for facilitating magic.  
  
"Next, superpredators two and three, Mrs. Pelham and Mrs. Dallon, the matriarchs. Some magical girls last longer than others. Those two sisters have lasted long enough that they have kids our age - three daughters and a son between them, and all three girls have magic. The mothers have wits and experience, and the daughters have raw power. Whole family is close to the Sisterhood, although they're supposedly not actual members. If you see a group of magical girls who look vaguely related to each other, wearing matching white dresses? Probably them."  
  
Imagining that life made me miss my mom. She probably wasn't a magical girl (was she?), but even if she wasn't, couldn't she give me valuable advice? Not even having that was so painfully lonely.  
  
"Number four? Kayden. The trophy wife. Made a fortune by marrying some sick pharmaceutical executive who liked the idea of a woman who'll always look like a teenager. She's turned that fortune towards trying to start an organization to compete with the Sisterhood, the Crusade; they have a _lot_ of girls but of course they're still horribly outmatched. I thought I liked the sound of it, and I considered joining them. Actually met up with them, got a bad feeling. I think something's wrong with them, like they have some veiled agenda, but I don't know what."  
  
_Someone should probably do something about that._  
  
"Kayden does sun magic, a lot like a stronger version of the Dallons and Pelhams - but the real problem isn't even her, it's her backup, because she has so much of it. It's not even close to the kind of backup Hana has, but it's local, so you're likely to run into them sooner rather than later. Don't make enemies of them, but really, don't draw their attention at all. They're hard to keep track of - if you don't recognize a magical girl, it's safer to assume they're with the Crusade than to assume they're not."  
  
"The Crusade isn't going to last," thought Kyubey. "It has structural issues that should become apparent within the next few months."  
  
"Good to know," said Sophia, and by her tone it was pretty easy to tell that that was actually news for her.  
  
I gestured with my baton for her to continue.  
  
"Fifth and final superpredator - Mel Fitts. Ambitious little fucker. She's exploited her magic to make money under the table, as a mercenary; her magic specializes in breaking things. Owns some valuable real estate downtown. She has a thing for monster girls, collects them."  
  
"Monster girls," I said. _What?_  
  
"Not quite magical girls, not quite witches," said Sophia. "Less evil than a witch, less human than a magical girl."  
  
"There's someone other than me trying to make magical girls, but they aren't doing it right," thought Kyubey. "Usually humans can't even tell the difference between magical girls I make and magical girls they make, but sometimes they get things so wrong that they make a monster girl instead."  
  
"No human forms, just a distorted magical form they can't leave," Sophia explained. "The magicless can't even properly see them - they just see some kind of animal, or an unmoving statue, or some plastic bags bouncing around in the wind. Anyway, Mel's a bitch and a half, but she's also very solitary, so if you don't pick a fight with her, you should be fine - just watch out for her monsters."  
  
"So, she's the last of them?" I said. Saying that this was a lot to take in would be an understatement.  
  
"The last superpredator," she clarified. "There are about half a dozen unaligned magical girls in Brockton Bay at any given time. Fresh meat. Not worth much consideration, because they're not generally going to last."  
  
"Oh, like me?" I said, before I'd even processed that I was angry.  
  
Sophia laughed nervously, and I stood up; even though I didn't want them to, I felt my flies surging up behind me, accentuating the intimidating effect.  
  
"Fresh meat, like me?" I said, emphasizing the repetition. "The bottom rung of the food chain? The kind of people you hunt like animals, catch in traps, leave to rot?"  
  
"I was more talking about myself," said Sophia, smiling and blatantly lying. "I'd like to think I've gotten my shit together, but I haven't really been around long enough to say that. Two years, five months, eight days. A lot longer than most, but the life expectancy's still very short. It's no excuse for anything I did to you, but magical girls have short, intense, and unpleasant lives. More than anything else, I'm sorry that I might have pushed you into becoming one."  
  
_You wouldn't be sorry if I hadn't become one._  
  
"Yeah, it'd be much more convenient for you if Kyubey had never shown up," I said. "Or if you'd never met me. Or if I'd just dropped dead. 'Not worth much consideration'."  
  
"Taylor," started Sophia, slowly. "There are people in this world who should be killed. People who make the world a worse place. There are people who shouldn't ever have existed at all."  
  
She looked directly at me, and I hated the eye contact.  
  
"...but you're not one of them," she finished.  
  
_Aren't you?_  
  
"Taylor, what the fuck did you even wish for?" Sophia asked. "Your soul gem is crapping out."  
  
I didn't answer. Fortunately, Kyubey didn't answer either.  
  
"We'd better get going fast," she said. She reached into a pocket in her sweatshirt and pulled out her own soul gem. She held it up, and I briefly got a glimpse of the insignia on its base: it looked like a dotted silhouette of a man, or a chalk outline. She made a flicking motion with her hand, and the world went dark.  
  
We were in a dark and nearly empty plain, which sort of felt reminiscent of a theatre's stage, or maybe a very large and empty basement. An invisible choir, much like mine, chanted over the growling of an electric guitar. I was still standing - although it was unclear _what_ I was standing _on _\- but Sophia was floating in place, surrounded by swirling dust in a distinct white spotlight that helped provide contrast for her dark skin. Her entire baggy outfit contracted into frilly antique underwear. Then, the dress made itself around her. All black, but with lots of sheer components - most notably, the mourner's veil that fell over her head.  
  
In the end, she looked a _lot_ better than I did. Her soul gem spit a terrifying-looking black crossbow into her arms, her special weapon. All I'd gotten, basically, was a stick. It wasn't fair at all.  
  
As the transformation sequence ended, the scene around us flickered out, and we were back in reality, in Sophia's yard. I couldn't see Kyubey anywhere - he'd apparently taken the opportunity to leave.  
  
"Ready?" Sophia extended a gloved hand towards me. I didn't want to take it - it was the same hand that had pushed me, just twisted and contorted against its will by something otherworldly. But I was on the brink, and I wanted someone to pull me away.  
  
Why did it have to be her?  
  
"Ready," I said. I clasped my right hand with hers, and we were pulled forward into a vortex of shadows. We emerged a second later on the sidewalk - across the street from Sophia's house. I should have expected something like that, but it caught me off-guard; I lost my balance and nearly fell on my ass.  
  
"Mind your step," Sophia said, and she smirked at me. I grit my teeth.  
  
We were skipping through Brockton Bay, a few yards at a time through Sophia's portals. There was no doubt that it made her the better witch-hunter of the two of us, that she could traverse the city with such ease. Even once I had some experience in magic and combat, I would probably still rely on Sophia's help - on my wish. Still, with each skip, I could feel all kinds of bugs appear at the front of my range; in net my swarm was growing, even as other bugs fell out of my range at the back.  
  
"Once you've found a witch," said Sophia, between skips, "you need to go inside its 'barrier' to kill it."  
  
"Kyubey mentioned something like that, but I didn't understand what he meant."  
  
"Witches are barely connected to reality. There's a little bit of witch here and a whole lot of witch somewhere else, in a false world bubble called a barrier. From the outside, a witch is really just a portal to the barrier. You kill the witch, you pop the barrier bubble, you get pushed back out to real life."  
  
I considered this, as tactical information to prepare for. I would probably need to see it play out to really prepare for it.  
  
"My magic works the same way," said Sophia, very suddenly and without prompting.  
  
"Oh?" I said, startled.  
  
"I flit in and out of existence to travel faster, or get through obstructions. It's the same idea on a smaller scale, for a more human purpose."  
  
_Thank you._  
  
I didn't quite let myself voice the thought, and silence hung for some time.  
  
"For future reference, the I-93 out of town is a good place to prowl for witches, especially if you're really desperate to get a bite. This is where witches usually filter in from other places, so a lot of the time, you'll get first pick."  
  
Alright, _that _was some important information to keep in mind - if I survived the day.  
  
We'd barely started paralleling the highway when I felt my soul gem heat up (like those little chemical hand-warmer packets they use at camp).  
  
"There's a witch nearby," said Sophia, although I'd already gathered that.  
  
"There," I said, pointing behind a distant cluster of trees. There, at the edge of my range, I felt an error in my bug field - bugs snapping in and out of existence, and the universe trying imperfectly to cover the discrepancy up. I knew it was a witch.  
  
"Good eyes," said Sophia, and she seemed a bit taken aback. She was sizing me up.  
  
After just a few more hops, we were standing outside the witch's barrier. It was a rippling, violent tear in reality - hard to see from a distance, but up close, it seemed reasonable to worry that it might pounce on me and swallow me whole at any moment. Distorted, abstract images - study sessions? - flickered through it like a school of fish swimming past a porthole. There was a constant, unrelenting scratching sound, which almost sounded like an indistinct whispering voice. Witches were magical girls that had gone bad - and however bad Sophia had been, it wasn't enough to qualify. I took a deep breath.  
  
"So this is your first witch," said Sophia. "Would you like to sit this one out? I could just handle it myself, and bring you the grief seed when I'm done, freshen up your gem. It would be safer."  
  
"No," I said, not even considering her offer. "I need to see how you do this. If I don't, I'm right back to square one. I have to become independent eventually. Don't hold my hand too much."  
  
Sophia gave me a once-over.  
  
"Okay," she said, tentatively, "but don't die, and certainly don't fucking go witch."  
  
"Obviously," I said, and I nodded. She sent me a glare, which was pretty fucking rich seeing as she got me into this in the first place. We stepped into the portal, into the witch's barrier, together.  
  
An imaginary banner unfurled in my mind's eye, and stayed there for a couple of seconds before disappearing again. It had been ornate, calligraphic, like something out of a storybook. An illustration of an apple, some text in a language I couldn't read, and some text I could:

_Enola Gay - The Bomber Witch_

"I've heard of this one before," said Sophia. We were walking down a long linoleum-tiled hallway; everything was so large, like we were in a school for giants. There was also an artificial sense of peace - and I immediately connected that peace to memories of mom, of the university where she'd worked. "Enola Gay. Haven't actually seen one, but they've been endemic in this region for a few months. Started out in upstate New York, got out of control. That said, the girl who told me about them had defeated one, and she was just some nobody whose name I can't even remember, so - probably not much of a concern."  
  
"What does it do?"  
  
"Gives unhinged people ideas on how to kill large numbers of other people," said Sophia. "Shootings, bombings, terrorist attacks. It fertilizes them."  
  
"Good to know." It wasn't the kind of immediately-useful information I was looking for, but it still helped to be reminded of what was at stake here, of the good we stood to do as magical girls.  
  
_And if I die, I die. Whatever._  
  
Sophia shot me a funny look, and I shrugged. Something violently shook in the distance, and I didn't know what it was.  
  
_Probably just a bomb._  
  
There were some bugs in this space, in this imaginary school, although they were hard for me to focus on. They were hidden in shadows, or in crawl spaces behind ceiling tiles, or in dark, empty rooms. My first thought was that they were simply bugs who'd been caught in Enola Gay, but discrepancies started to pile up - when I stopped focusing on bugs and then started focusing on them again, they weren't quite in places they would have moved to, and they weren't quite the same bugs. Geometry here didn't work properly, whole rooms flickered in and out of my range as we turned corners and passed through thresholds, but none of that quite excused it: I couldn't shake the dawning impression that things here were somehow being created and uncreated as they passed in and out of our senses.  
  
Sophia didn't mention it, but it seemed pretty intuitive that we were following the noises the witch made. As we approached the source of the witch's magic, what had first seemed like a subtle whisper, or a scratching sound, was now a cacophany of many voices, or an entire sewer's worth of rats scratching together.  
  
To my left, there was a long line of lockers. As soon as I saw them, I could also smell them. They were all filled with different things - stained scraps of paper, sewage, used tampons, used condoms, used syringes. Bugs, although they weren't registering for my magic. Most of the lockers had girls inside, acting trapped, even though the doors were all open and I could see them. Most of the girls were me. A few were another girl, who I couldn't recognize.  
  
I turned to look at Sophia. She apparently hadn't seen the open lockers. We kept walking.  
  
As we proceeded, I started to detect more and more very large rooms in the distance - immensely round, immensely tall, and full of bustling creatures besides my bugs - presumed hostiles. As we approached the noise, the large rooms started to click together, disappearing individually and becoming a single room, like when you uncross your eyes and stop seeing double.  
  
On the ceiling ahead of us, there was a prominent doorway. Sophia pointed at it with her crossbow.  
  
"In there," she said. It did seem to be the source. She stepped onto the wall, which became a floor for her; I followed. We faced the double door to the center of the witch. Or, as the floating, wobbling panel next to it called it: Study Hall.  
  
Through the glass windows in the study hall's entrance, I could see the same scene that I was feeling in my bugs. An enormous "theatre in the round"-style circular lecture hall, with raised concentric rows of benches and desks facing a central pit. It was like a cross between a top-of-the-line college classroom and the Roman Colosseum. At each desk, there was a little creature that _sort of _looked like a child, but wasn't - like they were out of It's A Small World. There must have been hundreds of them. No faces, or at least faces that were too _wrong _to register as faces. In the center of the pit, there was a very tall woman, delivering a lecture in a language I couldn't understand (if it even really existed, which it probably didn't). The "students" were all hard-at-work taking notes.  
  
"How do we fight it?" I muttered, to myself as much as to Sophia.  
  
There was a sudden loud whooshing noise, and a crossbow bolt shrouded in shadows sailed into the teacher's back. Looking at the impact - the tiny, spitball-like impact - instantly made me aware that the teacher was only a "very tall woman" in the sense that a whale is a "very large fish". She turned to face us, the study hall doors opened, and we were pulled a few feet forward - or perhaps the _room_ was _pushed towards us_. Through my bug map, I felt the rest of the witch's barrier vanish - Enola Gay had trapped us in its heart.  
  
In my state of stress and fear, I could hardly bring myself to estimate the teacher's size, and it was probably pointless anyway, because measurements weren't really a thing here. But I looked up and looked up, and I couldn't find a face. She started to raise her awful incomprehensible voice at me, and one of her hands tightly gripped a giant ruler. I gripped my baton. Through my bugs, I detected increased activity among all the students, like our presence had woken them from their default behavior - a substantial fraction of them were coming for me, now, climbing over their desks to get to me faster.  
  
On the other side of the room, an explosion went off, and it at least seemed to divert the teacher's attention; any students that had been caught in the blast were sent flying. Ragdolls. It was presumably the witch's own doing, but why? Sophia. She was circle-strafing the teacher. I couldn't see her, but I could sometimes make out a bolt flying from some direction or another at the teacher's center of mass - Sophia had clearly gone ahead and was now trying to finish off the witch as quickly as possible. I thought I might have seen the teacher tense up a bit in indignation when one of the bolts hit her, but it might have just been wishful thinking. I hoped Sophia was actually accomplishing something.  
  
I started down the stairs, as fast as I could - it took me towards the teacher, but it was the direction that took me the furthest from the students who were now pursuing me. There was a second explosion, and then, too soon and too close, a third one. Each explosion was different, some more so than others - the third one was more of an implosion than an explosion, and I could feel bugs and students alike pulled towards it. _I _was pulled towards it, a bit.  
  
A student had pulled itself prone over its desk, and now I was face-to-face with it. It was beaming joy out of its barely-even-an-emoticon face as it proudly held up a crumpled-up ball of paper. I was starting to back away from it when the paper flashed muave. Then teal, then orange. Seized by instinct, I smacked the ball of paper away with the baton; a few yards away, it exploded in mid-air into an assortment of fireworks. I shoved the student out of my way with the baton and forced my way past him to get away from the chain reaction of explosions.  
  
In the corner of my eye, I spotted a distant student holding up their own colorful flashing scrap of paper. Sophia had been approaching it in her shadows, but she saw it in time to change course before it blew. An opaque violet sphere formed around the explosion, several yards in diameter, and it stayed there. I'd been standing still too long, because something grabbed at my heels. I beat it with my baton until it let me go, and I set some roaches and moths on it to keep it occupied.  
  
I was lucky enough that the first time a student had the idea to _throw _a paper bomb at me, I saw it coming. Outside of my magic, there was nothing I could do to save myself. I summoned a swarm of butterflies to deflect the bomb; it went off where it landed and seemed to turn a few benches into a tar pit. But there were copycats, people who'd seen the first bomb thrown at me and decided it would make a good tactic. Soon I could see bomb scraps being thrown at me from every direction; my butterflies were already set up to push them away, but they couldn't take this onslaught. One of the bombs exploded in mid-air, just as it was being deflected; it turned the air around it into a giant snowball, and the butterflies trapped inside quickly died of the cold. I was absolutely going to die in this imaginary room. I didn't even know if anyone would ever find my body; how did that even work?  
  
In my frantic rush to get away from the bombs and throw the students off of my trail, I found myself crawling through a shallow pile of rubble - burnt and broken parts of dolls and furniture; here and there I could see a small fire burning. It felt like I was in a battlefield - but the thought just made me laugh, because _at least it didn't feel so much like I was in school anymore_. As I approached the end of this particular blast zone, I concentrated on the teacher. I needed to end this as quickly as possible. I found venomous spiders and centipedes, gallons of gnats and diseased mosquitoes and ticks, strong and hardy beetles, and all of the nastiest attack bugs I could think of, and I sent them her way. As I did, I reached the floor and pulled myself back up to my feet.  
  
I felt a tap on my back almost as soon as I'd reached my feet. It wasn't Sophia. I turned around in a snap, baton at the ready, and just barely got a chance to see a student holding a crude valentine with childish handwriting before it violently released a column of magenta smoke. The smoke settled out into a cloud of pink miasma, and despite my best efforts, I found myself breathing some in as I stumbled back. The magical chemical quickly overtook me and flooded my body with pleasant sensations and positive emotions. For a moment, I forgot what I was doing (I even started to forget _myself_) and I just wanted to stretch, curl up somewhere, and happily drift off to sleep.  
  
Then, of course, the backlash came. Those feelings had been forced on me, and as I processed that fact and gripped onto it, a buzz of disgust steadily rose and mixed in. I wasn't supposed to be content, and nothing whatsoever about this situation merited being _calm_. I looked for the student who'd released the smoke, but I couldn't find him - he must have disappeared in the distraction that it provided. The bugs were having some effect on the teacher, but it was slow enough that I doubted that it would ever be enough - they were just too small and she was just too big. I slapped myself in the face repeatedly to try to wake myself up, but if anything, it just had the opposite effect, maybe by making me breathe in more of the pink gas. I smiled and yawned while screaming inside.  
  
My mouth was open so wide that I probably shouldn't have been surprised when a colorful scrap of paper flew in.  
  
I reflexively started to swallow it, and for a second, I panicked, because I was certain I was about to die. Then, it went off in my throat, and it was worse. Searing black physical pain that pierced every point in my body from every angle and fucking obliterated my sense of self, worse than anything I'd ever experienced before or ever would experience again. On the pain scale from one to ten, it was a "fuck you, it's infinity, go back in time ten minutes and kill me then".  
  
The worst part was that the effect had blended together with the miasma, so I _liked_ the pain - no, _loved _it. I'd collapsed into an awkward pose, lying prone and clutching at myself, and I moaned - first quietly, then loudly. It was as hopeless and humiliated as I'd ever felt. Bugs started appearing around me in droves, to defend me and to attack the teacher. I mashed my face into the floor in some instinctual drive, and I succeeded in rendering myself less conscious, turning off some of my thought processes, turning off some of my senses. I was alone with the sensations the witch had imposed on me.  
  
The pain was starting to subside, and the smoke had long since settled, so I rolled over - ninety percent to get into a more comfortable position, and ten percent so I could get up and go again more easily. Bombs were continuing to go off in the background, far enough away from me but still too close, but there was a massive, continuous rush of wind pointed towards me, something different. I looked up and blinked rapidly. I couldn't see her face, but the teacher was crying out in anger and frustration, and she was bringing her ruler down on me in what felt like slow motion. I watched it come closer and closer, knowing that it was so much larger and sturdier than me, and being driven with such great force, that it would smash me into flat and bloody pieces as though I were a cockroach.  
  
Something else impacted me instead, and from a different direction. I was scooped up into shadows and night sky; Sophia was holding me in her arms. Behind us, there was an earthshaking crack of kinetic energy where ruler struck floor; I felt it ripple through me in a sonic wave and I was worried that my flesh would slough off of my bones, or that my soul gem would just shatter. I was faintly aware that it was a lingering effect of the miasma, but I gave Sophia a peck on the shoulder, and then felt nauseous about it.  
  
"Taylor, this isn't going well." The bombed-out classroom reappeared around us as Sophia dismissed her shadow dimension. "I'm not dealing nearly as much damage as I was expecting to, and if my crossbow bolts are doing nothing, your flies are doing less."  
  
I couldn't feel my bugs. I hadn't been able to feel them for about a minute, but I'd only just found the energy to focus on that problem. I could still tell that they were there, but my sense of them was so blurred that it was useless, like when you've just woken up in the morning, and -  
  
"We've got to find a way out of here," said Sophia.  
  
"No way out," I practically coughed out. Sophia gave me a long, sad, condescending look. It was true. Enola Gay had trapped us in this miserable place, and she was going to have a ball of a time torturing us to death.  
  
...unless...  
  
I raised my hand up to the top of my head. I found the crooked antennae on my headband, and I adjusted them. As I'd suspected, that had been the problem - my bugs came back into focus, and when I found just the right angle, they almost seemed crisper than before, just for a moment. They'd been directionless without me, but I was shocked to sense just how much they'd multiplied - there were hundreds of times more bugs in the room than there had been when I'd lost them. Some surfaces were practically covered in them.  
  
I looked around, and the idea clicked into place.  
  
"Just through," I said, and quickly. I slipped out of Sophia's arms and found my balance. "There's something here that can hurt her worse than your magic or mine."  
  
Sophia was shaking her head at me, loudly muttering at me to stop, but I ignored her. I found a flat white piece of paper on a damaged, abandoned desk, and I quickly squashed it into something roughly ball-shaped. Its color began to change.  
  
_Please don't blow up in my hand. It'll make me look very stupid, and possibly dead._  
  
I hurled the flashing paper ball at the teacher. It missed her, but it came close enough. Burning oil splattered over the teacher's right leg, and she shrieked and moved to put it out.  
  
"Hers," I said.  
  
"Holy fucking shit," said Sophia, and I wanted to roll my eyes at it. I didn't need her praise or approval. I just needed to get the job done. I'd done something stupidly risky - there had been no reason for me to make or throw the bomb with my hands, when I had disposable bugs that could do it just as well.  
  
So that's exactly what I set them to work doing. Find paper, steal paper, deliver and crumple paper. I began to emanate confidence, and it was enough to make the students run away and cower in fear from me when I waved my baton. I'd dealt a blow against their mother, their teacher, and I was going to do it again. They'd better hide. Sophia shot one in the back. Good.  
  
The bombs began to arrive at the teacher's legs and torso. One that covered her in glittering dust - disappointing. One that released a volley of boxing gloves in all directions, apparently too small to have any effect - even more disappointing. She turned towards us and began to approach, and it even seemed that she was going to climb out of the pit in her fullness. Then, another bomb caught her, and a distortion seemed to spread through the air that slowed her to a crawl, as though the air itself had become sticky. That was better. Another bomb produced a coat of acid that burned through her dress and the outer layer of her skin, and yet another turned into a cyclone that fed the fire on her leg that she'd failed to put out. The teacher lashed out with her ruler, but missed us entirely, hitting a completely different part of the room and succeeding only at launching some of her own students into the air.  
  
Sophia dealt the final blow, and at that point I was too relieved that we'd survived to let it bother me. She'd stuck a bomb onto the tip of one of her bolts, and cooked it perfectly; it went off just as it hit the teacher's hip. Its effect was simple erasure; a large spherical chunk of the teacher disappeared, amputating and mostly destroying both of her legs, along with her gut, revealing blood and bones and organs and evil magic inside. The top half of the giant didn't fall to the ground, and it apparently took her a moment to even realize what had happened. When she did, she pulled both of her hands up to her face - which was still too high up for me to see, even as she lowered it - and quietly weeped.  
  
The environment around us was beaten away in several strokes, like something being erased from a whiteboard. We were actually standing in a grassy field behind a gas station. Sophia and I were looking at a ratty old shoe for some reason. Oh - it had a little black jewel resting inside, in a spindly golden frame. The witch's soul gem, the grief seed. That was what I needed.  
  
I looked at Sophia, and she nodded. I went to the shoe and bent down to pick it up - but someone else beat me to it, grabbed it and took it right in front of me. My eyes widened, and I looked around in confusion, but I couldn't tell where it had gone.  
  
"Tough luck," thought a smarmy voice in my head. I glanced at Sophia, and she was incandescent.  
  
_Show yourself_, I thought into the void. I scanned our surroundings for the magical girl that had presumably taken our kill. My bugs quickly found the discrepancy - just around the corner of the filling station, there was a giant monster, the size of a large truck, with two girls riding on top of it. They were congratulating themselves on a job well done - clearly the culprits.  
  
"This way," I told Sophia, and I ran to catch the two thieves and their beast. For good measure, I set stinging bugs on them to keep them occupied. But I tripped on something - I guess my improved coordination wasn't perfect? - and fell to the ground. I felt my face heat up on the grass.  
  
"You fuckers picked the wrong day for this!" I could hear Sophia shouting, and I could feel that the girls had redirected their steed to face us.  
  
"Oh? Is there a right day, Soph?" The voice came from one of the thieves, and it was impossibly smug. I looked up, to get more information on her.  
  
The first thing that stood out was that the monster they were riding was literally just a dog. A twenty-foot-tall Rottweiler who just seemed happy to be there, panting and sniffing at the station's roof. Looking at it almost made me feel like I was still inside a witch - it seemed badly photoshopped into reality. But this Clifford was real.  
  
The first of our enemies - the one who seemed to be leading from behind - was the most normal-looking magical girl present, which wasn't saying much. A deerstalker cap and a buttoned dress in matching beige, all feeling muted behind a simple red scarf - her magic was clearly going for a simple "detective" character. The way she was looking down on us with that evil smile made me think of Emma - the only difference was that this girl's hair was blonde instead of red. Kyubey was perched on her shoulder, which was just _great._  
  
The second of them was the _strangest_-looking one here, and was clearly responsible for the giant dog. Her hair would have been very short even on a boy, but she had floppy brown dog ears on the sides of her head. Her soul gem was embedded in a metal bone incorporated into a dog collar on her neck. She wore a white blouse and a skirt of solid pastel yellow - but on the skirt, there was a small cartoon illustration of a dog, which looked mangey and feral. It was animated, somehow - watching us, wagging its tail, and silently barking from inside the fabric. A long, stiff tail covered in brown fur poked out behind the skirt, which was affecting her posture.  
  
Her face seemed to resist beautification, although I wasn't sure how much of that was inherent to its structure and how much of that was her being _fucking pissed _at us. I didn't have the slightest clue _why_ \- _we _weren't the ones stealing a basic need from _them_. Maybe she was just a negative sort of person.  
  
...oh, or it was the many, many fleas she was trying and failing to swat away. It might have been that.  
  
"Call off your apprentice," the detective girl told Sophia. "Surprised to even see you working with someone. Going to go out on a limb and suggest that some coercion is involved. Bugs - Taylor - you've forced her into this, haven't you?" I was taken aback and started to panic, but it slowly set in that she was still addressing Sophia.  
  
How did she know my name, though? And who were they, anyway? The Crusade? Or was the detective girl Mel?  
  
"You're an idiot, Lisa," said Sophia. "Now give her back her grief seed if you don't want a crossbow bolt to go with it." The detective girl rankled at that, and it was at that point that I noticed the jewel-encrusted white pistol holstered by her hip. I felt oddly threatened by it, seeing as I was staring down an animal that weighed more than many houses.  
  
"Stop bothering the newbies," said a third magical girl. She was up in Sophia's face, and she was waving around an ornate flaming battle-axe. She was very pretty, and she at least seemed to be acting out of concern for me, but she was also _carrying the grief seed I'd just earned_, and that was a pretty good way to get on my bad side right now.  
  
"Aisha," hissed Sophia.  
  
I wasn't sure _why_ Sophia was hissing at no-one in particular. I took a careful step away from her.  
  
"You know, he wasn't a threat to you," said the detective girl - Lisa. "You were just going through what should have been a fleeting bout of paranoia. He wasn't a threat to you then, and now he isn't at all."  
  
Sophia took a short moment to process the words, and then aimed her crossbow and fired it.  
  
"You were saying something about someone being an idiot?" said Lisa. "Have Taylor call off the bugs."  
  
It took a while for me to realize what had happened; there hadn't been a bolt at all. Sophia had gotten too heated and had fired too fast, mistakenly believing she'd already loaded it. Lisa had been very lucky to survive - unless she'd known what would happen?  
  
"Taylor, if you don't want to be eaten by a dog, call off the bugs," said Lisa.  
  
"And if you don't want my _axe_ that's on _fire_ up your _ass_," said Aisha. I lunged at her to get the grief seed back, but she spun out of the way and I landed facefirst in the grass again.  
  
"Taylor, I might have to find you another witch," said Sophia. "We're outnumbered."  
  
_Outnumbered? Well, if you count the dog..._  
  
"You know, you're being a couple of real fucking bitches right now," said Sophia.  
  
"Would you care to rephrase that?" said Lisa, smugly gesturing to the rabid dog girl.  
  
"Cunts," spat Sophia.  
  
"Magical girls shouldn't use such language!" thought Kyubey, and he kneaded Lisa's shoulder. Everything stopped for a moment; the elephantine riding-dog took a few curious steps towards us. I tried to get up, but I felt stuck in place, like something indistinct was pushing down on my back, like a form of magical sleep paralysis.  
  
"Give Taylor the grief seed," said Lisa, although I wasn't sure who she was talking to. The grief seed briefly appeared in front of my face, and after a moment, it gently settled into my hands. Did Lisa have telekinesis? I could see her being a sort of psychic detective archetype. As the tension was largely defused, I directed my bugs to leave our enemies alone; I hoped I wasn't opening us up to an attack.  
  
"Sophia, how do I use this?" I muttered, uncomfortable with the prospect of cleansing my soul in front of these strange and hostile magical girls. I still hated asking Sophia for help with _anything_, but I probably hated it a little less each time, as terrifying as that was.  
  
"Here, I'll show you," said Sophia, and she shot Lisa and the dog girl a death glare. I started to get up, but Sophia knelt down, found the fine chain at my neck, and pulled my soul gem out where I could see it. It was weird letting Sophia work in my personal space, where a couple of weeks ago she would have been tying me up, beating me up, terrorizing me.  
  
"I'm not usually one to apologize, but this was a terrible mistake," said Lisa. "I'm terribly sorry for any inconvenience I put you through." _Oh, it was an _inconvenience_, was it? What a little weasel_. "We were _misled_-" She paused for a moment and aggressively hoisted Kyubey up, giving him a death glare of her own. "-into believing that you were up to something nefarious."  
  
Sophia held my hand and moved it to my soul gem; she indicated that I was supposed to touch my soul gem to the bomber's grief seed. I clicked them together, and waited. I could feel something magical happening, but my soul gem wasn't getting any brighter.  
  
"It won't happen again, and it shouldn't have happened this time," said Lisa, droning on. "I should have realized I was being played much earlier, and frankly, a magical girl with my experience should know that when Kyubey tells you the sky is blue, it's time to look up." Was she really trying to blame her actions on the familiar? It was almost comical.  
  
"Now, think about what you want," whispered Sophia. "What you wanted. What you wished for."  
  
"Sophia," I said, and I started to babble, "that doesn't make sense, you need to explain it better than that, I can't-" But suddenly, I felt much, much better. I could see darkness draining out of my soul gem and into the already-fully-black void of the grief seed. It was like breaking a fast, or coming up for air, or using your room key after a stress-filled day-long drive. I rose to my feet with more confidence than I'd had in several years.  
  
"I just wanted you to keep an eye on Taylor," thought Kyubey, as he slipped out of Lisa's grasp and leapt off the side of the dog. "Not rob her and threaten to kill her. And you called Sophia paranoid! I should have just picked a different magical girl for the job."  
  
Sophia squeezed both of my hands and pulled herself back up to her feet. It was a bit awkward, but I didn't stop her.  
  
"Who are these girls, anyway?" I asked Sophia, lowering my voice.  
  
"The Underworld," she said. "They're some Crusade wannabes." Aisha let out an ugly fake laugh at that, and Sophia just smiled back. "They think they can take on the Sisterhood and win. Big dreamers, little talent, utterly fucking insufferable."  
  
Kyubey nudged me in my ankle, and pawed up at the grief seed I'd just cleaned myself with. I certainly didn't want to hang onto it, so I dropped it for him, and he promptly ate it. He didn't use his mouth; instead, he simply absorbed it into his white fur. It was actually pretty cute.  
  
"Get away from there," said Lisa, and I suddenly realized she was pointing her magic gun at Kyubey. He looked up at her and ran and hid; he sent no explicit message, but I could _feel _his disappointment in her, and it was as damning as anything. Were most magical girls bullies? There was Sophia, of course, but Lisa was apparently even willing to kick around something as fundamentally innocent and good as Kyubey. I stared her down for a few seconds, then returned my attention to Sophia.  
  
"The one with the dog," I said. "Is she a monster girl?" Sophia shook her head.  
  
"Hey, Rachel." Lisa elbowed the dog girl. "She thinks you're a monster girl."  
  
"Dumbass!" Rachel barked, although she somehow seemed less angry than before.  
  
"And the same to you!" I shouted back.  
  
"But just so you know," Lisa condescended, "monster girls are pretty rare, and you'll know them when you see them. Poor Rachel just got shafted on the costume, but she can always change out of it."  
  
Rachel whispered something in Lisa's ear, and I noticed the cartoon on her skirt sniffing around.  
  
"No, not right now," Lisa snapped. "Anyway, my parting thought here is that-"  
  
"Not interested," I said, cutting her off. Why the fuck _would _we be interested?  
  
"My parting thought here," Lisa said, steamrolling right through my explicit rejection, "is that I wish you well in the future, Taylor - and I'm _very_ happy to see you bring out something caring and sweet in Sophia. That's quite a feat." She winked at me, and I cringed. I knew she knew, and I knew she could fuck me over completely, or even blackmail me. A lot of people were very good at making me feel powerless, and Lisa was apparently one of them.  
  
"Fuck off, Lisa," said Sophia. Lisa's heart seemed to sink, but I didn't feel bad for her.  
  
"Magical girls should stick together," Lisa said. "No secrets. We'll talk again soon?"  
  
"Or... we won't," I said. Lisa just stared into space; Rachel whistled, and the dog bounded around in a giant circle, readying to leave.  
  
"Hey, don't forget about me!" Aisha said, to the annoyance and amusement of her 'friends', who stopped the dog and had it crouch down so they could hoist her up onto it. Why had they almost left her? And right after going on about magical girls sticking together, too. What a shitshow.  
  
I watched the self-proclaimed "Underworld" leave - felt it through the flies I'd stuck to them for tracking, too - and when I was quite certain that they weren't coming back, I transformed back into my street clothes and looked at Sophia. It was hard to make out through the layers of fabric, but I thought Sophia was crying. Strange as it was, I actually felt sorry for her, although I wasn't cruel enough to say it out loud. I shouldn't have been so angry at her earlier, and I shouldn't have taken out my frustrations on her. This wasn't the same girl who'd systematically ruined my life for fun; seeing her targeted so viciously herself just underlined that. She was the side of humanity I'd wished for.  
  
"Hey - thank you," I said. I adjusted my glasses, nervous that they might change something about how Sophia saw me. "For the advice, and for fighting for me. Without your help, I'd probably be a witch by now, or dead."  
  
"Taylor," said Sophia, exasperated and clearly burdened by guilt. "It was the least I could do. I got you into this mess in the first place. And honestly? For your first day on the job, you were _outstanding_. You did more against the Enola Gay than I did."  
  
"I already accepted your apology," I said. "I'm not the kind of person who holds grudges."  
  
"I am," said Sophia. "Actions should have consequences. For the last two and half years, I've been driven forward by the idea that witches and other evil beings need to die for the harm they've done and the harm they will do if left unchecked. But I've been doing evil myself all that time. What am I?"  
  
"You obviously had the potential to change, because you did," I said. It hurt to lie, but it would hurt much more to let her go down this path. "Witches can't change, can they?" Sophia's face brightened up just a bit, and she gently blew on the inside of her veil.  
  
"You know," Sophia said, and I couldn't tell if her affect was sincere or ironic, "I don't even know if I'm doing this for good reasons now. I've always been so lonely; I've always wanted a partner. It disappointed me so much when I realized Emma didn't have the potential to become a magical girl. I've tried to connect with six or seven different magical girls, and every time something goes wrong. I take something the wrong way, or I say something nasty and push the issue. I always tell myself I was too good for them, that I'm better off working alone, but I know I'm just really fucked up. When Kyubey told me that you'd become a magical girl, I was so conflicted, but I was desperate, and I hoped that maybe, this time..." She trailed off.  
  
"We could work together?"  
  
"God, I'm pathetic, aren't I?" Sophia said. I was getting anxious and stressed out - like her nervous energy was catching. "Jesus Christ."  
  
"I think we'd be a lot more effective that way," I said, and I put some effort into a smile. "We should meet again - we can even talk at school." It was becoming easier and easier for me to visualize Sophia turning into a witch, and that added a lot of urgency. "It doesn't all have to be magical girl stuff, either. Wouldn't we have stronger bonds as a team if we just grabbed a milkshake sometime, or spent a day at the Boardwalk? If we hung out?" I tried to imagine myself saying the same thing to Sophia a week ago. I couldn't.  
  
Sophia nodded, and I nodded enthusiastically back at her, hoping to encourage her.  
  
"And, you know, don't let anything Lisa said get to you," I said. "Talk about really fucked up. If she's the competition, then I kind of doubt you were ever a very evil magical girl, Sophia."  
  
"She really likes playing head games," Sophia agreed. "But I just hate her because she stole my friend. Their third girl-"  
  
"They have a third girl?" I asked, not really trying to interrupt.  
  
"Yeah," Sophia said. "Aisha. Memory-erasing magical girl. We worked together, just for a few days, but I thought we were really hitting it off. We had a lot in common. But then Lisa recruited her, and I couldn't stomach Lisa. That was the last I ever saw of Aisha. Still pisses me off whenever I think about it. Sometimes they steal my grief seeds just... because, like they almost did to you today. I really hate them." She made direct eye contact with me, and she was obviously in a bad place. "Ironic."  
  
Entirely of my own free will, and without ulterior motivations, I threw my arms around Sophia and hugged her.

***

INTERLUDE: Mundane  
  
  
"I don't think any real skeptic would find the commission's report credible. You look at the tattoos, the sigils, and you try to tell us that it was a result of _operator error_? The deadliest non-nuclear explosion in _history_ \- operator error? No, there are reasons that these things happen, and if you go looking with an open mind, you can get a pretty good idea of what those reasons are. There are powerful entities that want to test themselves against-"  
  
Danny Hebert clicked the television off. He hated the History Channel. Annette had hated the History Channel. He needed some noise if he wanted to dull his thoughts and get a modicum of peace, but he wasn't willing to tolerate this poisonous anti-intellectual garbage. What had started out as an educational network now pushed conspiracies; it told the downtrodden and gullible what they wanted to hear, which was that their problems had deep cosmic meanings, that they were the machinations of aliens or the occult. People wanted to live in some grand secret narrative. It was a seductive idea, and feeding it to make a profit, however unhealthy it was for those who bought into it, was unfortunately all-too-typical of big business.  
  
It was probably better that he not try to escape from his own problems. Where was Taylor? It had already gotten dark, and over the last two years, Taylor had never spent much time outside the house if she could help it. Since she was attacked at school, she'd started taking walks by herself, despite his attempts to discourage them. This was by far the longest walk that she'd taken.  
  
Taylor had a right to be independent, and Danny desperately wanted to avoid making the situation worse. But when Taylor's bullies had assaulted her badly enough to send her to the hospital (if only for a brief checkup to protect the school from litigation), he'd heard the words "suicide watch" used. They were immediately and aggressively dismissed, but they were used, and now they were repeating themselves over and over again in Danny's head.  
  
There was an albino cat in the window, looking in. It was apparently a stray that had moved into the neighborhood a few days ago, but it was much cleaner than you'd expect of a stray cat. It looked eerily pale illuminated by the porch light.  
  
_Do you know where Taylor is?_  
  
The cat just stared back at Danny, because it was a cat.  
  
Danny had already lost Annette, and there were a million things that he'd always regret surrounding that. He knew he couldn't afford to lose Taylor too - as much as the bullies provided a solid Other to blame, he knew he would blame himself for anything that happened to Taylor. He hadn't been there enough; he hadn't fixed things.  
  
He wished he had some way of contacting Taylor, so he could make sure she was okay. At the same time, he knew why he never would. It would be a betrayal of Annette's memory; Taylor wouldn't accept it any more than he would.  
  
It had been over thirty minutes of just staring out the window, waiting for something to change, when Danny saw movement: two teenage girls walking out of a shadow, Taylor and another girl. Startled by the noise, the cat jumped away from the window and scampered off. The other girl was wearing very dark clothing for a pedestrian at night, which created a poor first impression, like a bicyclist riding without a helmet.  
  
Danny opened the door and walked out onto the porch, to ensure Taylor's safety just a bit faster.  
  
"Dad!" Taylor cried out in surprise, and she stepped up onto the porch to join him.  
  
"Taylor," Danny said. "Glad to see you home. Didn't realize you were bringing company." He thought he might have recognized the other girl, but he wasn't sure; it was hard to even identify details of her face in this lighting.  
  
"Oh?" said Taylor. "Oh, no, Sophia was just walking me home."  
  
_Oh. Sophia._ Danny hadn't recognized her in her elaborate goth getup.  
  
"Hello, Mr. Hebert," said Sophia, and she gave him a lazy teenager-ish single wave.  
  
"Wasn't expecting to see you," said Danny. Last time Danny had spoken to the girl standing in front of his house, he'd barely been able to hold back his anger. He'd already known at that point that she was, if anything, the most laudable of Taylor's tormentors, being the one who'd finally cracked and tried to set things right. But she was still the closest thing Danny had to a human face of the problem.  
  
"Wasn't expecting to see you either," said Sophia. Danny left it at that.  
  
"Hey, Sophia?" Taylor asked. "Is there anything you need while you're here?"  
  
"No," said Sophia, "and I really need to get going. Need to catch a bite on my way home." It would have been polite for Danny to offer to fix her something, but he didn't.  
  
"Alright," said Taylor. "See you at school?" Sophia nodded, and Danny watched as she ran off into the night, in her non-reflective clothing; he'd heard something about her being a track star, and he could believe it. Taylor waved all the while.  
  
"It seems like you had a good time," said Danny. Then, cautiously: "am I wrong?"  
  
"You could say that," said Taylor. Danny paused for a moment before probing further.  
  
"What were you out doing, anyway?" Danny asked. His daughter didn't seem to have answers prepared, and she stuttered a bit as she answered, which wasn't reassuring.  
  
"Having some extremely necessary conversations, mostly," said Taylor.  
  
"Come in," said Danny, and he opened the door for Taylor; she came in, and they sat down in the living room, by the television he'd turned off. She seemed glad to be home, but that was worrying in its own way. "Are you alright?"  
  
"Yeah, I'm fine," said Taylor. Then, she got a burst of confidence, and said something that was, to say the least, more surprising: "Sophia's a really good person. I felt a lot safer around her. You'll probably see her around more in the future." Even with what nuance there might have been to the situation, it hurt Danny to hear his daughter saying that about someone who'd done so much to hurt her.  
  
"It hasn't even been a week," said Danny, cautiously. "Are you sure?"  
  
Taylor didn't quite respond, just breathing and shrugging, which was exactly what Danny was afraid of. Clamming up, retreating, writing him off. Maybe it would help to clarify where he was coming from, to seem less like he was just sowing arbitrary doubt?  
  
"Because you mentioned that sometimes, the bullies would pretend to be your friends? As a tactic?" To Danny's immense surprise, Taylor actually smiled at that.  
  
"I get why you would be concerned, but Dad, please trust me," said Taylor. "I'm _certain _that that's not what's going on here."  
  
Was this a real budding friendship, then?  
  
"If you're absolutely sure," said Danny, "then I'll give you some more general advice. Don't let yourself get talked into doing anything you'll regret. Even if someone isn't acting out of malice, they can still send you down a bad path - and either way, if they put pressure on you to do something you're not comfortable with, it's a huge red flag."  
  
"I love you, I'm glad you're concerned, but aren't I about ten years too old for this talk, Dad?"  
  
_You really think you're as grown-up as you're going to get, don't you?_  
  
"Maybe," said Danny. "But I don't want my daughter to ever go through anything like what happened to her five days ago. Not again."  
  
"That's something that can only really happen to someone once," said Taylor.  
  
Even as she sat next to him, even as they spoke and successfully communicated some things, Danny felt that he was losing his daughter. Every non-answer, every nonsense answer, every answer that made Danny want to shout "Why, Taylor? Why do you think that?" - it all made it seem a little more that Taylor was slipping away, slipping to somewhere he couldn't reach while being the kind of parent he wanted to be - that she was beyond help, or at least beyond the help he could provide. It was a terrifying and humiliating thing, to be forced to stand to the side while your child fights their own battles on a plane you're not even allowed to see.

***

Brian pulled his earbuds out as he arrived at his father's home. He was having a very good day - he'd gotten a raise at work, and not a small one, he'd had a date, and they were on again for Friday, his homework had all been done for over a day, and he knew he'd been making straight As since the start of the school year. Sometimes, Brian reflected on his life, and he thought it exemplified how far someone's luck could turn around - particularly when there wasn't one obvious cause.  
  
Brian's father gave him a small nod after he walked through the front door, acknowledging his presence. Brian nodded back, and he knew that was the extent of the interaction. His father loved him, but he was a stern man, not one for small talk. Brian still relied on the sense of discipline his father had instilled in him; he'd developed into a much more sociable young man himself, and in many ways his father represented a hardened mindset he was wary of, but the primary emotion Brian associated with his father was still gratitude: _Thanks, Dad. You raised me right._  
  
Life hadn't always seemed so bright. Something like half of that was Brian's mother. She'd always been a mess of a human being, to the point that it'd be easier for Brian if he hated her - he didn't, and it pained him to think about what she'd done with her life. But as much as that hurt, he knew all-too-well that it hurt less than living with her would - when she lost custody of him, it was the best thing that had ever happened to him.  
  
Over the past three years, though, things had started getting better in lots of little ways, for the entire family. Money started showing up in all kinds of unexpected places, sometimes literally. Dad had made a chance reconnection with some men he'd known in the Army, and they'd really helped get him back on his feet. Something had finally scared Celia straight, and she'd gone to rehab; the worst of her drug-dealing boyfriends skipped town, and no-one had heard from him since. It still blew Brian's mind that Celia had found _an entire bedroom in her apartment she'd been unaware of for years_; she'd subsequently subleted it to a nice family of climate refugees who'd been homeless since Hurricane Levi hit Charleston in '07. Brian hoped she'd be able to hold onto the progress she'd made as a person, and as much as he knew he should temper his expectations, everything seemed pretty good for everyone.  
  
Brian sat down at his desk in his room and opened his laptop. It was several years old, and he'd bought it used, but he'd also bought it with money he'd earned himself - there was a certain satisfaction in that. It worked a lot better than you'd expect, anyway. As his account loaded, Brian gazed out the window. It was starting to rain - lucky, then, that he'd gotten home when he did. But luck always seemed to come to those who sought it and worked hard for it - there was the value of commitment and discipline. Of course, Brian hadn't actually known when the rain would start, or even that it was going to rain at all - there was some actual serendipity there. There always was.  
  
When his account was ready, Brian scrolled through the circle of files and programs on his home screen. There were some new email messages - a reminder of his pay raise, a couple of assigned reading attachments from his teachers, some spam that had gotten through the filter. He briefly stopped at his calendar program to update it. He also scrolled past some games he'd recently downloaded, to play when he had extra time and lacked the energy to spend it on something else.  
  
As much as he'd taken to a positive, optimistic attitude lately, something stark at the back of Brian's mind suggested to him that this was all deeply empty, that if there was a reason Brian cared so much about doing well for himself and worked so hard to be a high-achiever, he'd long since lost that thread and was now simply going through the motions, devoid of purpose. Of course, that was stupid; it was just a little stubborn doubt from some minor dysfunctional part of Brian that had never settled down quite right. But it was still there, and it still bothered him, and as much as he'd actively not thought about it, it still stuck around. _Why?_ Because you're supposed to. _Why?_ Because that's how the world works. _Why? Why? Why?_  
  
At the end of Brian's file spiral - behind several password-protected and hidden folders - there was a folder called "dvu", full of images. It was full of photographs and drawings he'd collected that made him feel a certain way; he called them up when he needed a boost. The feeling was hard to describe - if he _had_ to, he'd say it reminded him that he wanted to be a father, but that wasn't quite right. It was more like a reminder of something that had happened a long time ago and been lost in the haze of childhood. An imaginary friend or an imaginary daughter, a damsel archetype to protect - probably a subconscious projection of his mother as a childlike figure. Even he thought it was a bit strange, but part of him _needed_ it.  
  
There was a gust of wind outside, and a cat or some other small animal ran through the rain past Brian's window. He instinctively took this as his cue to close the folder, and the file maze that led to it - he knew his motives were innocent, but he also knew he didn't want to be caught with a secret collection of pictures of little girls. The vague explanation really wouldn't help.  
  
Brian could hear the door to the house open and then close. Apparently, his father was taking a step out. Brian just sat for a moment, watching the rain fall, watching the world go by in its constant motion. He felt two imaginary weights snake around his shoulders - light weights, but weights - and pull him back just a bit into his chair. For just a moment, Brian was really comfortable.  
  
Then, he looked down and saw that he was hugging himself and drifting off. There was still clearly some unfilled void, but you just needed to push it aside and keep going - you could get so far that way.

***

After a long day's work, Ms. Green sat on the cold, sticky naugahyde of her couch, and scooped cold, sticky ice cream into her mouth, straight from the carton. The room was dark, and the bright light of the television reflected off of the ice cream on its way to her face. Between bites, she ran a hand through her blonde hair, which had lost most of its natural color and needed to be dyed regularly.  
  
She was watching a special on the Marun Field coverup. It wasn't entirely succeeding in reducing her stress, but she valued the time she spent in front of the television each night anyway - she liked, no, _needed_ to be informed, to know what was going on in the world, and to think critically about it. The television made that easy to do, in a world where she didn't have the energy left at the end of the day to do it any other way - well, except by scrolling through news on her phone, but she could do that on her lunch breaks or while she was stopped in traffic, anyway. Sometimes, she even scrolled through the news on her phone while she was watching the television.  
  
Ms. Green considered herself a failure. She was a career woman, and she made an impressive salary which she worked hard for. But she had spent most of her adult life raising a young woman who had now been missing for half a year, and was presumed dead. Part of Ms. Green knew that Eri was dead, and part of her knew that Eri was alive, but suffering, lost or trapped. She wasn't sure which certainty she hated feeling more.  
  
She'd met Ben Tamura in college, when she was getting her master's degree. He was a brilliant, considerate man, a Japanese-American engineer, and probably one of the two smartest people she'd ever met. They'd gotten married in '93, and then they'd gotten divorced in '98, over a series of stupid arguments that she still wished she could take back. At some point since, he'd moved back to the mother country, to help oversee the reconstruction efforts in Kyushu.  
  
Eri had mostly been her mother's responsibility, and she'd never wanted to be seen as the lax parent, or as a frivolous woman - especially as it became clear that Eri was taking after her father. Ms. Green had practically worked a second job coaching her daughter, motivating her to succeed, taking her to the best tutors she could find, entering her in every academic contest, making clear that achievement and intellectual superiority were her top priority. Eri, for her part, had leaned into it, and had excelled in ways her mother could hardly have dreamed of - she trounced her classmates, skipped two full grade levels, and earned her way into a magnet school for profoundly gifted students. Ms. Green had always tried to keep her pride veiled, to avoid rooting Eri's work in some addiction to affirmation and approval, but sometimes it had been difficult.  
  
There had been just one moment when Ms. Green had been concerned that she'd taken the whole thing too far. For years, Eri had had her heart set on going to Cornell, and no one had even considered the possibility that she might not get in - until the afternoon she'd received her rejection letter. Ms. Green had sat there - right where she was sitting now - and felt like the biggest monster in the world, watching her daughter sobbing.  
  
But it had just been a fleeting thing - within minutes, Eri was perfectly calm, optimistic, even _resolved_. Ms. Green would be told by specialists, months later, that these were warning signs of suicide, but at the time, they'd seemed so encouraging. Eri _had_ been a well-rounded, healthy enough person - hadn't she? And, of course, the next morning, the point was rendered moot, when the second letter from Cornell came, correcting the mistake and announcing that Eri actually _had_ been admitted. She'd been so excited...  
  
Ms. Green realized that she'd zoned out, and was crying into her carton. She looked up at her television and saw credits quickly scrolling by.  
  
"Next on the History Channel: Walpurgisnacht and the London riots! Did this ancient holiday-"  
  
Ms. Green hit the power button. No point in starting another program now. She needed sleep and she was proving unable to escape herself anyway. She dumped the carton in the bin and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth. In the dim light, she could see her face in the mirror.  
  
Eri clearly hadn't fared well in Cornell, separated from her mother for the first time in her life. She apparently made some friends, but unfortunately, Ms. Green never got their names or saw their faces; they seemed like a bad crowd, and she blamed them for whatever had happened to Eri. Grades slipped, and quickly, to degrees they never had before. Ms. Green had kept calling her daughter, but the calls rarely went through, and when they did, the conversations were too short, and too full of accusation and dismissal.  
  
The last conversation was the worst one. Eri had never sounded _healthy_ at Cornell, but on her last day, she'd sounded like she was dying, and like her mother had killed her. It was stupefying.  
  
"Have you ever considered that none of this fucking matters?" Eri had snapped.  
  
When her mother had asked for clarification, she'd elaborated:  
  
"Smart people don't go to school to learn. You don't need to go to a school to learn anything worth learning, and you certainly don't need to seek out a famous, expensive school. The purpose of an educational institution is the credential it provides, and the status bound up in that credential. That's what all of these people spend all of these years seeking. They could learn much more efficiently, if they wanted to. If someone were a good person, and a smart person, they would just go out into the world and try to do good things. They would fight. They would assassinate the people who keep everyone else in bondage, because you need to clean out the rot in society holding it back before you can actually start building things unobstructed. That's what you would need to do if you actually wanted to change the world, and not just train and train and train to a script designed to keep the population in line. If it were just a trap I'd watched other people walk into, I could almost laugh about it? But I've wasted my entire life, _Mom_."  
  
Eri had hung up on her mother at that point, and those were apparently the last words anyone ever heard from her. She'd attended her classes sparsely up to that point, but afterwards, she simply disappeared altogether. After a few days, the police had stopped putting serious resources into the search efforts, and they believed Eri's fate was clear. Her mother still sought regular updates, even as they grew less and less frequent.  
  
Ms. Green put in eyedrops at her bedside and laid down to sleep. As the blur left her vision, her eyes settled on the window at one of the top corners of the room. Despite the late hour, it was bright outside, owing to the city's lights. The world seemed so dark now, with Eri gone. Last week, a disturbed man with an assault rifle had killed twenty-five children and three staff members at an elementary school, _right here in Brooklyn_. She knew it was purely psychological, that tragedies had always happened, but she _felt_ in her heart like it was her fault, like she'd let something terrible into the world by being a shitty parent and failing her daughter. She hadn't talked much to Ben since Eri disappeared, and every time he'd been a perfect gentleman and tried to console her, but she knew that he blamed her. She would, in his position.  
  
Late in Eri's senior year, she'd taken in a rescue cat - as if she hadn't already had enough responsibility piled on her. It was beautiful, with sleek white fur, and friendlier than any other cat Ms. Green had ever encountered. When Eri went to Cornell, she'd taken it with her.  
  
Ms. Green wondered if anyone would ever even find _it_.


End file.
